First came the bipartisan promise made by the leaders of the Republican majority and the Democratic minority in the U.S. Senate: There would be a debate on immigration in the upper chamber. And they're backing up their words with action. The debate has begun.
"The time for political posturing is behind us," announced Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, leader of the majority, declaring that "now's the time to back up the talk with the hard work of finding a solution" to questions about immigration that have bedeviled the Senate and the country for years.
"We really do get along despite what you read in the press," added minority leader Chuck Schumer as both men stood side by side. Amity had replaced enmity, and it was about time. Let's all wish both gentlemen Godspeed. May their tribe increase if the country is to go forward into calm open seas rather than be forever stranded in the straits of discord.
Now the vote-counting, deal-making business of politicking can begin in earnest. Even the usually volatile president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has joined the chorus on this happy occasion instead of rolling around like a loose cannon.
Complicated as the process has been, the essence of the deal remains simplicity itself: These latest dreamers of the American Dream can come out of the shadows and breathe free, no longer having to fear a mass dragnet that would scoop them up and return them to their lands of origin, where they would be the foreigners--for so many have been so thoroughly Americanized over the years.
Nor would they be subjected to threats of blackmail from anyone who might bear a grudge against them or think of them as easy pickings. They'd be free to walk the streets unafraid like the true Americans they are, able to meet anyone eye to eye and stride on into a golden future. The only wonder is that it should have taken all the rest of us so long to see the happy ending to this saga that has been staring us in the face all along.
The biggest disappointment of this congressional session has been the decisions of Arkansas' Tom Cotton to join forces with the hardliners opposing meaningful immigration reform, or even a free and open debate on the subject. What a shame, because he seems willing to throw away this country's greatest treasure: all these newest Americas together with their extended families. For he would deny American citizens their current right to sponsor brothers and sisters, plus grownup or married kids, as candidates for that invaluable green card they need to stay in this country.
This is where a lot of us came in, for back in 2013 the Senate passed a comprehensive bill to reform the American immigration system that would have offered some 11 million illegal immigrants a path to full citizenship. It was coupled with a proviso that would also have secured this country's southern border. But the House of Representatives snubbed it, never even debating it. Please, let's not make the same fateful mistake this time.
Once upon a time--on June 5, 1947, to be exact--a great general and later secretary of state by the name of George Catlett Marshall unveiled a plan that tackled a number of problems facing the country as the Cold War was beginning. Perhaps the greatest was how to prevent all of Europe from falling under the sway of Communist tyranny. In the midst of what others saw as a crisis, Secretary Marshall and the thinkers around him spied an historic opportunity, and they seized it with alacrity, daring and success.
By sharing what became known as the Marshall Plan in the last few minutes of a commencement address at Harvard University he took the high road, declaring that this great new American initiative was a lot more than just another opening gambit in the Cold War. "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine," he announced, "but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." It didn't so much defy Communism as invite its adherents to join the West in a new era of shared prosperity.
Who could find anything objectionable about such an ostensibly open-ended invitation? Answer: Comrade and Generalissimo Josef Stalin, who immediately grasped that the Americans had taken aim at the Reds' Achilles heel: Their failure to deliver on its promises of material success for the masses. And the Americans were threatening to drain the fetid swamp in which Communist ideology thrived.
Was the Marshall Plan a triumph of idealism or realism? Both. For realism is just the next room of the dream called idealism, just as welcoming the newest Americans is both the practical and principled course. To quote a recent biography of General Secretary Marshall: "Great acts of statesmanship are grounded in realism no less than idealism." Indeed, they meet and merge until there's no real distance between them.
Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 02/18/2018